Meta labels real images as ‘Made by AI’ on Facebook and Instagram, photographers complain

Meta AI

Meta, the parent company of popular social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has been struggling to detect real social media posts and incorrectly marking them as ‘Made by AI’ lately. Many users have reported that Meta is adding the AI-generated label when the photo is viewed on the mobile app and not on the web.

According to a report by TechCrunch, a photo of the Kolkata Knight Riders celebrating their Indian Premier League (IPL) win, was incorrectly tagged as ‘Made with AI’. Moreover, several photographers have also complained about their real photos being incorrectly marked as generated by AI on the Instagram mobile app.

Pete Souza, a former White House photographer, also told TechCrunch, that one of his photos was tagged with this label, despite being a digital scan of a film image from the 1984 NBA Finals. Later he edited his caption on Instagram and added, “I had this film processed a couple of days after the game. I’m not clear why Instagram is using the ‘made with AI’ on my post. There is no AI with my photos.”

Now, Meta spokesperson Kate McLaughlin has told the American news website, The Verge that the company is aware of the issue and is evaluating its approach to solve this issue. Further, Meta wants the labels to accurately reflect the amount of AI used in an image.

Meta had announced the ‘Made with AI’ label to artificially generated images uploaded on their social media websites, back in February. It was specially made for images generated with the help of AI or from popular third-party software like Adobe Photoshop.